Across the state, brewpubs, microbreweries, tap houses and beer festivals fill a new thirst for beer in endless variety, with menus from bluesy barbecue to gastropub. (Both brewpubs and micros make and sell beers; micros also bottle and sell retail off-site.) Hip restaurants brag on their beer lists, and trendy bars sport dozens of draft taps. Below are just a few of Florida's offerings. For current listings, check the BeerFly directory at beeradvocate.com and floridabrewersguild.org.

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Cigar City Brewing Co. - Tampa

After years of planning, amateur brewer Joey Redner Jr. started Cigar City, selling beer in take-home "growlers'' filled at the draft tap. Two years later, he bottles beer to sell around the state and in New York City. The brewery says its brown
ale, Maduro, is perfect with a mild cigar. It ages other beers
in cigar box cedar, dedicates its pale ale to jai alai and adds notes of Cuban coffee and guava to others. When brewers handed
out awards this year, Cigar City (along with Swamp Head)
took home the most gold.

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Abbey Brewing -
Miami Beach

Abbey Brewery's monastery beers and dark cloisters seem out of place on cosmo-crazy Miami Beach, but it does keep South Beach hours, open until unmonk-like 5 a.m.

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World of Beer -
Tampa

The World of Beer now has 13 locations across Florida with dozens of drafts, hundreds of beers and packed houses.

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Dunedin Brewery - Dunedin

Dunedin Brewery, the oldest microbrewery in Florida in continuous operation, started when Kandi Bryant kicked husband Michael's home brewing pots out of the kitchen to the garage. He eventually set up a seven-barrel brew house in 1996 with brews like Beach Tale Brown, Pipers Pale Ale and Leonard Croon's Old Mean Stout (honoring a local rock band). Today, the Bryants happily oversee a 20-barrel brewing operation surrounded by gleaming fermentation towers — and a full menu of food and local music.

When the brewery tapped its latest brew, a Highland Games porter made with peat-smoked malt, it got the traditional salute of the Scots-loving town, a parade of 20-some bagpipers inside the brewery?and out.

As a former head of the Florida Brewers Guild, Bryant credits changes in Florida law allowing the import of odd-size bottles — and the more exotic beers they contained from Belgium and elsewhere — for exciting a new DIY generation to try.

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Swamp Head Brewery - Gainesville

Luke Kemper

Swamp Head started when Luke Kemper returned to Gainesville from beer-crafty Colorado and wound up starting a brewery with a family friend who was a skilled home brewer. He now sells from Jacksonville to Sarasota. And there's honey — from local bees, it brags — in a few brews.

Know Your Beer
Malted grains, hops, yeast and water combine and ferment in dozens of styles, strengths, flavors and colors. Each has its own balance of malty sweetness and hoppy sharpness. A Pilsner can be as distinct and masterful as a heavy dark beer.

» Classic lagers are bottom fermented, cooler and more aromatic. Fermentation of other beers is at the top, warmer and quicker.

» Porters are stronger beers made from dark malts; stouts are very strong porters.

» Wheat beer (or Weissenbier) has more wheat than barley; hefeweizen is cloudy and still contains yeast.